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Hey guys,

I'm starting this rather dower sounding thread with a question I'd like to pose to you about the MOBA genre in general. See I just discovered DOTA 2 on steam and was drawn in immediately. The entire premise of arena combat sounded AMAZING and at first I could only imagine the possibilities. I was enthralled by the superficially unassuming and realistically deep and complex mechanics. Crafting, leveling, builds, combos, teamwork!

But as I grew in the game I came to see how the mechanical design is quite flawed and doesn't favor any but the professional level player. A single sub par player can cripple a team in the first 5 minutes of a match!

To put it concisely, the 1 hour match is won in the first 5 mins typically with the first players to hit level 6 PAINFULLY steamrolling the opposition of the following hour (often dictated by "first blood!"). Mechanically it seems set up to let on team just beat down on the other brutally after the opener. When they kill you, they deny XP while gaining for themselves, and money functions in a similar fashion. Upon respawn the guy who just killed you is a level or two up from last time with a new toy to pummel you with. It simply feels abusive. One death leads to another when all of a sudden its hopeless. But don't you quit you'll get penalized and put in low priority for matchmaking. You just need to alt tab to desktop and do something else while the match plays out. That is bad for the match and the individual.

Understanding how painful one player can make a match for everyone the community is the most vitriol of any game community simply by design. The attitude reflects the mechanical cruelty.

The honey moon is over. What originally looked like a high skill game is indeed a game of nonsense... Any thoughts on other mobas or are they all as mechanically flawed.

Yes. dota, like all moba's is geared from professional play. Yes, it's a team game.
Yes, dota 2 sucks compared to hon on all levels. Yes, hon is amazing, but best played with 4 people you know.

you're new at it. you don't know how they work yet. I don't play dota any more, but HON is more brutal, and while some matches are over in 15 minutes, some last more than an hour. just part of the game. it IS high skill, and team based. You need a good team, and you need to not suck if you want to win.

Play League of Legends.

Not available from steam, but the game is more approachable imo, there's another one called heros of the storm, which again seems to be more balanced than dota 2(though I don't like some of the mechanics behind it personally.

In all seriousness sounds like you need a casual moba, in which case I'd suggest LoL if you can get past the pay-to-win aspects. I can't really speak about HoN but LoL is generally said to be the most casual moba of the lot.

I find Dota 2 to be very challenging and typically fun when I play with a group of friends. If all you do is solo-queue ranked games then yes Dota 2 is going to be very acerbic and not very fun. With the current patch the "comeback mechanic" has never been stronger... I've seen teams come back and win the game after a single teamfight against opponents twice their XP+gold levels, but again that requires very very good planning and team coordination, or outright feeding by the winning team. I've seen it more times than I can count in both my own games and in professional games. That said it isn't going to just "happen" on its own, so unless your team has the coordination to pull it off... Also part of it is the heroes, at a certain level players quickly begin to learn how to hard-counterpick heroes and that makes it easy to shut down poorly drafted hero lineups. that's why I prefer to game with friends, even when things go south fast one of us tends to find the humor in the situation and then suddenly nobody really cares we're getting our butts kicked.

Hon is the least casual. it's easily the most punishing of all the moba's. IMO, probably the best one to start with is Strife. It's casual, solid graphics, and friendly mechanics.

Play Smite. You actually get to control your character, it has excellent noob mechanics (auto level skills and auto buy items), and you can get all the gods (including the unreleased ones) for $30.

LoL might be casual in comparison to DOTA 2, but I still had plenty of issues with it, and I feel like the "one player can bring down the whole team" still applied. With Smite, it obviously doesn't help to have a weak player, but I feel like the rest of the team is able to compensate.

So I suck at MOBA games. Yeah I said it. DOTA2 has a steep learning curve. LOL is middle ground. Blizzards new Heroes of the Storm is much more smaller learning curve and their matchmaking is quite good, noob vs noob its not until you climb ranking do you see harder more organized opponents.

However regardless of what MOBA you play you will be more successful going at it with a group of friends than as a lone wolf looking for a team. So my suggestion to you is try to find a group to play with especially when you're just starting out. If you play with more seasoned friendly players they can help you get better. Another suggestion is to pick a hero and stick with it. Learn it, master it. Do not jump around at first. While the first inclination is to see someone on the battlefield with a cool character and say, "I want that" and the very next game try it out you'll only hurt yourself and it will slow your learning.

DOTA2 is getting worse by the day.
When ranked matches were introduced, solo players used to pick heroes as a team, communicate more and coordinate better. People joined ranked matches to win, and winning in DOTA is easier if you play as a team.
This is not the case anymore. I always pick a support, because otherwise there will be no wards or courier. It's very hard to gather the other players to use a Smoke, even thou there is a communication shortcut to signal this.
The result is that I'm losing more than before, with no appreciable change in play style.

The community grew too much, too fast. Valve doesn't seem to understand how the community works either (it's far from being homogeneous) and I feel like it has a lot of conflicting interests in this regard.
After all, it wants DOTA to be an e-sport, it wants to sell customization items, and it must foster a healthy community of amateurs in a highly competitive environment.

Since The International 2013 was WAY more interesting than TI2014, and that the community is in shambles, I think that Valve is failing hard

Hmmm I wonder if Counter-strike would be considered a MOBA if it was scrims only, 2 teams against each other??

Personally I think both LoL and DotA 2 "suck." They don't really suck mind you but they're games I personally don't get much enjoyment when playing.

They've got all the traditional issues of a MOBA (they are after all the definition of "traditional" for MOBAs) such games that take forever but in reality are decided in the first 5-10 minutes. They allow one bad player to ruin the entire experience for a team. They play slowly and you spend a lot of time just trudging from one spot to another on the map. Last-hitting in my opinion is a really lame game mechanic that's tedious and boring. Much more emphasis on knowing the right builds/items to choose, i.e. the majority of builds offered to a hero are just not viable so if you don't want to cripple your team you have to choose specific builds.

Heroes of the Storm from Blizzard is a bit different in that it eliminates some of the annoyances from LoL/DotA2 like last-hitting mobs and "simplifying" the build process a bit. Most importantly though is the games are MUCH faster in terms of time (most finish in under 25 minutes) and gameplay. In HotS you simply move a lot faster, more heroes have effects that increase movement speed, etc. The maps themselves are a lot more fun, each one has a unique set of objective that are critical to your teams success. Plus I just like playing as a classic Blizzard character more than some made up generic hero that fills LoL/DotA 2 rosters.

What HotS doesn't fix, and I don't think should or can be fixed in a MOBA, is the fact that you will consistently get teammates who have zero interest in playing as a team. Or just out right suck. You have to work your way up the ranked ladder to consistently get decent teammates and even then...

TL;DR - Do not invest your time in a MOBA if you a) don't have a consistent team of friends to play with or b) don't intend in trying to play ranked matches. They're just not fun if you're not winning (or at least putting up a competitive fight) IMO.

I completely agree with the last hitting point. It just doesn't make sense to not deal free damage to minions because you'll get less gold and XP.

I don't agree with HoTS cutting items out entirely, though. That's a level of complexity and depth that is just gone for more advanced players. I like how Smite sidesteps this by building in an auto-buy system. It might not give you the best items, but it will at least give you decent items so you can still function.

What I would really like to see is more PvE game modes. I think that might help foster some teamwork by building exercises and rewards for players without having to jump into a PvP scenario. If the foundation of your MOBA is solid, then PvE should be fairly simple.

superjawes wrote:

I completely agree with the last hitting point. It just doesn't make sense to not deal free damage to minions because you'll get less gold and XP.

I don't agree with HoTS cutting items out entirely, though. That's a level of complexity and depth that is just gone for more advanced players. I like how Smite sidesteps this by building in an auto-buy system. It might not give you the best items, but it will at least give you decent items so you can still function.

I see your points with the items. To a degree they address this in HoTS by making your skill point choices more meaningful than the skill points in say DoTA 2, sometimes they're more than just number increases. As/if they expand the talent trees for heroes in HoTS the depth is increase, but we'll see where Blizz takes it.

What I would really like to see is more PvE game modes. I think that might help foster some teamwork by building exercises and rewards for players without having to jump into a PvP scenario. If the foundation of your MOBA is solid, then PvE should be fairly simple.

PvE is not something I'm personally interested in with MOBAs but if it teaches players and helps translate those skills into PvP then I'm all for it.

Smite is by far my favorite MOBA. I also prefer doing Arena or Assault modes because they're usually between 20-30 minutes as opposed to the hour of most MOBArounds.

I haven't played DoTa 2 because I know it's similar enough to LoL that I have I'll never be great at it, and I'm not a big fan of the point and click play style. I also don't like that you basically have to pick a counter balance to the other teams selection depending on what lane you'll be holding. It's a drawn out rock, paper, scissors match where you have to pick out just the right items for your character or you're doing it wrong.

Smite is 3rd person with WASD controls and it feels more frantic when you engage opponents; especially in arena where it's non-stop 5v5 clashing. I may be weird, but I enjoy no knowing what characters the other team is choosing. Sure, sometimes it leads to lopsided matches, but most players seem to understand that there needs to be a balance of damage, tank, support. Players seem more willing to play as a team in Smite than other MOBAs. It also seems harder for a single poor player to ruin the match.

Smite isn't as rock, paper, scissors-ey and it feels like characters are balanced against a common goal and not certain other characters. Also, item selection is more forgiving. There are "required" items, yes, but as long as you're selecting with a clear idea of what you want you're going to do fine. And going against the normal roles(ie. speccing a tank for damage) can really work out for a good player.

All that being said, I haven't played LoL since I discovered Smite a couple of years ago. I may be less accurate in my comparisons than I think I am.

Well... I'm not going to say that it sucks, but the time commitment to be a great player seems to verge on addictive behavior. There's something broken about that.

That is not how Dota 2 works.

If you die once, you should play more defensively - pull the creep wave, stay nearer to your tower, make sure you understand what your escape mechanism is (do you have a stun?). Did you buy the right starting items? A stout shield or maybe upgrade it to a poor mans shield? What about a ring of protection if you have high health? What about wards so you can't get flanked? Does your hero scale higher into the late game? If so, then an early death is not the end of the world. I've won games when I have fed multiple times, mostly acting as a giant anchor to the teammates around me.

Unfortunately, after about 300 hours and more than 200 matches into the game, I realize I am nothing but a complete noob. My MMR is 1,000 and I am seriously considering paying for coaching so that I can improve. Dota 2 is a very complex game with a great deal of depth. Give it another 50 hours and then see how you feel.

NarwhaleAu wrote:

That is not how Dota 2 works.

If you die once, you should play more defensively - pull the creep wave, stay nearer to your tower, make sure you understand what your escape mechanism is (do you have a stun?). Did you buy the right starting items? A stout shield or maybe upgrade it to a poor mans shield? What about a ring of protection if you have high health? What about wards so you can't get flanked? Does your hero scale higher into the late game? If so, then an early death is not the end of the world. I've won games when I have fed multiple times, mostly acting as a giant anchor to the teammates around me.

Unfortunately, after about 300 hours and more than 200 matches into the game, I realize I am nothing but a complete noob. My MMR is 1,000 and I am seriously considering paying for coaching so that I can improve. Dota 2 is a very complex game with a great deal of depth. Give it another 50 hours and then see how you feel.

Sorry - between grad school, two kids under the age of four, wife, friends, movies, and an unending Binding of Isaac: Rebirth addiction, I basically have no free time at all. But thank you!

Basically most of the people in this thread suck at the game (they have a massive learning curve, so not surprising), and don't know how to play. If you're losing in the first ten minutes you're doing it wrong.

I want to try out DOTA. I am scared off by the huge learning curve. Dozens of hours just for proficiency. Another thing I don't want is anybody's ****. I don't want to join a game, screw it up for the team, and then have some **** breathing down my neck about it. Just the thought of that alone is enough to just completely stop any interest.

So, for anyone that's familiar with the game here, how are newbies supposed to go about getting into DOTA? That is what's the best way to start and how do I avoid the community's BS for everybody's good? What is the right way to go about learning DOTA, and how long does it really take?

edit: Yeah, after reading this thread I'm less interested again.

Hate to be a broken record...but try Smite. The worst part of the learning curve is probably just learning how MOBAs work (which is going to happen regardless of which one you play), but after that you've got several systems that are noob-friendly. You can set it up so the game will auto-buy your items and auto-level skills, letting you focus entirely on your playing. And the community seems pretty friendly. I've only run into two or three people who were jerks.

Moba communities are the worst. They're cruel, abusive, and unkind. that goes for ALL of them that are competitive. Lol, hon, and dota in particular. The others aren't really competitive, and smite may be nicer. It's not as competitive as the others, so it may very well be the case. I couldn't get into smite myself, but it's well liked. I'd suggest again that people check out strife. It's free, pretty, and SO relaxed. it's more traditional moba as well, so is a good starting place if you're looking at dota or hon at a later date. ALSO HAS PETS (OMG CUTE!!) SO PEOPLE LIKE AUXY WILL LLOOOOVVVVVEEEE ITTTT!!!

How do newbies get into moba's? by either:
A) NEVER solo queuing to avoid the abuse from your team (you'll still get it from the other team)
B) being dumped on EVERY GAME by a-holes until you figure it out
C) watching 100000 hours of gameplay videos so you know what the hell your supposed to be doing.
D) play no-stats games. Hon has a few crazy modes for fun, like Mid-wars or grimms levels that you can just dick around with and they don't expect you to be decent. People are more forgiving. It's been a LONG time since I played dota, and lol iz fur wimpz, so i don't know if they have the same. ( I don't know why the stuck with the stupid secret shops in dota. so annoying)
I have a clan on Heroes of Newerth, and you guys are welcome to join, Giant Balls. We're a nice group of guys, all mid to low range players, play reasonably often, but no abuse allowed. I'm Just "sweatshop" on hon, as they don't fit "king" in the name
Add me if you login.

fhohj wrote:

I want to try out DOTA. I am scared off by the huge learning curve. Dozens of hours just for proficiency. Another thing I don't want is anybody's ****. I don't want to join a game, screw it up for the team, and then have some **** breathing down my neck about it. Just the thought of that alone is enough to just completely stop any interest.

So, for anyone that's familiar with the game here, how are newbies supposed to go about getting into DOTA? That is what's the best way to start and how do I avoid the community's BS for everybody's good? What is the right way to go about learning DOTA, and how long does it really take?

Ok, so learning the game is actually really easy. When you start up the game, go to the tutorials section. It will walk you through a few tutorials on last hitting, laning, map control etc. You can then play a single lane match against some bots, and then play against a full team of bots. Once you are ready to go against humans, you'll be restricted to a selection from 20 easier heroes. There is something called MMR (matchmaking ranking) that gets assigned to you (you won't be told what it is) but that means that you will generally be playing against other players of the same skill as you.

Even easier, just google "purge welcome to dota you suck" or "purgegamers" and go to his new website. He just updated his ~2 year old guide a few weeks ago and it tells you everything you need to know about the game.

When I started I had exactly the same concern. In my first 5 or 10 games, I would routinely play against people for who it was their first game, so nobody really knows exactly what they are doing.

Dota 2 is a LOT of fun. I hope you enjoy it!

This is the link to his new guide:

https://purgegamers.true.io/g/dota-2-guide/

Enjoy!

Here's strife, for those looking for a less toxic and more innovative moba: http://store.steampowered.com/app/339280/
I don't like innovation, so i don't play it, but it's well reviewed, and the tits are huge.

Dota 2 is a complex game. The team hero drafts have to follow certain rules, a team of pure supports or pure carries or pure gankers isn't going to cut it. Lets say you win the proverbial lotto and get a perfectly drafted team hero combination that also happens to hard counter the other team's hero draft. But if your team doesn't correctly match your heroes to the right lanes during the laning phase then that perfect advantage was just mostly if not completely negated. Dota 2 is a game of flexibility and recognizing when you need to change up lanes and change the lane strategy. There is nothing stopping the other team from realizing they got out-drafted, and playing mischief with how and where they lane the heroes with an unconventional lane.

Another example. Players can choose to draft a team will "win" by 20 minutes, but if they miss that goal they probably will get out-carried and have no hope of winning the longer the game progresses. That's just another consequence of the drafting choices, either learn the heroes better to recognize their roles and what stage of the game they excel in (early, mid, late, hard-carry late), or yes there will be games where one team never stood a chance because they missed the timing window for its hero choices.

Dota is all about strategy, and if the players don't know this stuff it's gonna be rough. The only consolation is that generally most new players are also learning the same things. Of course a very large portion of Dota 2 players came from OTHER moba games or Dota 1, so they already have a head start on the learning curve. Playing friendly 5-player co-op matches versus bots is a great start, but AI play nothing at all like a real person does so that only goes so far.

Played allot more and reading allot of your feed back is interesting. I'm not put off by "hardcore" I love star craft 2, and counter strike, lol. Its just the mechanics are brutal for the entry level player. Brutal as in, you will be matched with a troll who yells rush but retreats to the base. You will play with well meaning idiots who ruin an entire match. Brutal in the sense that if your team is crippled in the first 5 mins and you quit you are majorly penalized if you do it again that week. Its brutal because allot of mechanics are still deliberately obfuscated, items and their properties are not appropriately clear in what they do, so you need to memorize ALLOT of stuff just to play a few different characters competently. From what I understand their is no system to encourage you to play the different heroes, no achievements associated with them so you get allot of players using the same 10 "OP" ones that have the most videos on youtube for how to own with them. PvE needs to be developed if only for better training if not for the fact that its tons of fun and I currently comp stomp in the game solo and with friends.

Flip side of that and what I've learned for the better is how good the community really is. Making friends in DOTA is easier than any other game save star craft I've ever played. If you mean well and play respectfully then they will work with you and its easy to put 30 new friends who you'll actually play with regularly in a week of DOTA play on your steam friends list. That the entire design of the game is so super team focused you haven't played DOTA till you have played with a team of 4 other friends. DOTA is flavor rich and I like that over the more hokey style of HotS. I've come to love DOTA 2 as a free game w/o any money down.

Sure there are issues and valve is patching every other day it seems to fix them. Now they have a cool mechanic where your character animations change as you take damage to show your health or lack of it. All kinds of little touches I enjoy. I'm becoming a big MOBA fan and as I grow in this game I'll probably start to explore other ones eventually, would love to get away from the mouse and keyboard input at some point and get to more of a brawler controller style of play.

Kougar wrote:

Dota 2 is a complex game. The team hero drafts have to follow certain rules, a team of pure supports or pure carries or pure gankers isn't going to cut it. Lets say you win the proverbial lotto and get a perfectly drafted team hero combination that also happens to hard counter the other team's hero draft. But if your team doesn't correctly match your heroes to the right lanes during the laning phase then that perfect advantage was just mostly if not completely negated. Dota 2 is a game of flexibility and recognizing when you need to change up lanes and change the lane strategy. There is nothing stopping the other team from realizing they got out-drafted, and playing mischief with how and where they lane the heroes with an unconventional lane.

Another example. Players can choose to draft a team will "win" by 20 minutes, but if they miss that goal they probably will get out-carried and have no hope of winning the longer the game progresses. That's just another consequence of the drafting choices, either learn the heroes better to recognize their roles and what stage of the game they excel in (early, mid, late, hard-carry late), or yes there will be games where one team never stood a chance because they missed the timing window for its hero choices.

Dota is all about strategy, and if the players don't know this stuff it's gonna be rough. The only consolation is that generally most new players are also learning the same things. Of course a very large portion of Dota 2 players came from OTHER moba games or Dota 1, so they already have a head start on the learning curve. Playing friendly 5-player co-op matches versus bots is a great start, but AI play nothing at all like a real person does so that only goes so far.

Interesting feed back here. I read allot on the game and honestly there is a big gap between entry level mechanics and high level mechanics education. Valve is trying to foster the coaching system but there simply aren't enough coaches and aren't enough students with adequate time to learn. DOTA is so very complex as you say that it is just flipping hard to penetrate. Its what causes phenomena like the trench to occur where players can't break out of the entry level group and into the low level of high skill players. I'm content to play entry level as honestly its a game not a lifestyle, lol. That is the issue with many online games is that you can't traditionally "learn em" because the balance is constantly in flux. Combos and builds get taken apart on a daily basis.

I'm content to play dota 2 with a full team of friends, win or lose. But being the first friend to enter into the MOBA scene was brutal and Valve needs to create some sort of shelter or draw for new players.

Yeah, the incredibly brutal learning curve is a downside to Dota. But I enjoy the complexity and the tangled strategies and general silliness that can randomly ensue so it's my sort of game.

kamikaziechameleon wrote:

Played allot more and reading allot of your feed back is interesting. I'm not put off by "hardcore" I love star craft 2, and counter strike, lol. Its just the mechanics are brutal for the entry level player. Brutal as in, you will be matched with a troll who yells rush but retreats to the base. You will play with well meaning idiots who ruin an entire match. Brutal in the sense that if your team is crippled in the first 5 mins and you quit you are majorly penalized if you do it again that week. Its brutal because allot of mechanics are still deliberately obfuscated, items and their properties are not appropriately clear in what they do, so you need to memorize ALLOT of stuff just to play a few different characters competently. From what I understand their is no system to encourage you to play the different heroes, no achievements associated with them so you get allot of players using the same 10 "OP" ones that have the most videos on youtube for how to own with them. PvE needs to be developed if only for better training if not for the fact that its tons of fun and I currently comp stomp in the game solo and with friends.

There are several mechanisms for this. Every player was given an "All hero" challenge, you earn a trophy for winning a multiplayer game with a randomly chosen hero until you've played all ~110 heroes once. It's one of those things for achievement getters, or people looking to try new heroes at least once. All heroes get a trophy case achievement thing now.

Every annual "The International" compendium also introduces more hero challenges, this year TI5's compendium includes a random 10-hero list that once completed gets you compendium points, and can be done up to three times for five levels. There's also the four weekly challenges, one of them being a specific hero challenge. Completing that earns compendium level points and compendium coins that can be used to get a item sets/bundle drop.

kamikaziechameleon wrote:

Sure there are issues and valve is patching every other day it seems to fix them. Now they have a cool mechanic where your character animations change as you take damage to show your health or lack of it. All kinds of little touches I enjoy. I'm becoming a big MOBA fan and as I grow in this game I'll probably start to explore other ones eventually, would love to get away from the mouse and keyboard input at some point and get to more of a brawler controller style of play.

There's no shortage of them, maybe you will find one you like even more than Dota. My favorite little touches were the individual hero responses. All ~110 heroes have literally dozens upon dozens of unique voice dialogue they can say depending on the situation or in-game event. I still hear responses I've never heard before and I've been playing Dota 2 for a bit over two years.

Kougar,

I was just now on DOTA putzing around with the Bot options and I have to say. The bot options are extremely horrible. The difficulty settings don't have to do with general AI compitency so much as challenge to the single player that is me. To make this more clear, medium difficulty is a game setting and in that for bot matches you end up with a AI skill ratio between the teams. On medium if you never did anything your AI would win. On hard your teams AI is about 15-25% less compitent meaning your entire team will be about 1-5 levels behind the entire opposing team, Even when I'm highest ranked in a match of hard my team regularly looses because they will not guard towers or press the opposition. I can deal with the stats difference but the inability for the AI to respond to basic Attack/defend mechanics is rather annoying. Hard bot encounters only work as a carry because you have to basically be able to roll the center lane on your own. At the end of a match I'll be level 25, my opposing team will have all approximate level 20 characters and my friendly AI's will all be level 15-18 and they can't even handle creeps.

Complaining about the AI might be a bit annoying but it's a large part of what contributes to why players can't penetrate the game when the darn bot matches emulate the darn level trench, lol.

Beyond that I'd hope they can do a better job of conveying stats than they do currently. I mean I see what my damage is but I have no idea what my DPS is in the darn game.

Gosh, trying to learn things in the bot matches is impossible because the bot settings are retarded. It basically simulates the trench not a decent game or even decent matchmaking. Hard isn't hard like, oh they initiate great or have great moves its my guys literally just suck at playing. Darn AI settings stink in the game.

superjawes wrote:

What I would really like to see is more PvE game modes. I think that might help foster some teamwork by building exercises and rewards for players without having to jump into a PvP scenario. If the foundation of your MOBA is solid, then PvE should be fairly simple.

Speaking as someone with zero experience with MOBAs, this would be really good for the genre. The perception amongst outsiders is that MOBAs are little more than the West's response to pro Starcraft leagues--go hardcore 24/7 or don't bother showing up. I'm not hardcore, I'm not even competitive--what multiplayer gaming I do is me and a couple of friends playing SupCom Sorian botstomp while drinking heavily--but I'd at least give it a shot if I felt there was something there for me. And more players is always a good thing even if they're just in the background.